laying oak strips on existing subfloor

[RichardS]

Why is nothing quite as straightforward as it ought to be....!

Just started ripping everything out of one of our rooms to lay an oak strip floor. Now, I was dismayed to find a while ago that this room is not boarded as others are, but instead has a floor of 18mm ply that runs under the walls and into the bathroom on one side and the hallway on the other. My plan had to been to hire a door trimming saw (an earlier thread conclusion) and trim next to the walls so that I could remove the boards for this room only without having to rebuild the partitions.

However, it now looks like this would be an awful lot bigger job than first anticipated and for awkward spots like under the door frames ply won't give into brute force of hammer & finest abuse-grade chisel as chipboard would have done.

So, I'm considering just secret nailing the new floor on top of the old one - it's pretty level, being constructed in the main from 8x4 sheets.

Gut instinct tells me that this could be a bad move if I _ever_ need to get under the floor to rewire or sort out a heating leak, but what do others reckon?

(I suppose I could fabricate a conventient access hatch for the area surrounding the radiator...)

[Andy Hall]

I had the same issue exactly on the upstairs landing and decided not to muck around with trying to remove chipboard adjacent to various walls.

My solution was to cut access ports in strategic places in the chipboard with the Routabout set up.

Then in areas above them (two boards width), I ripped short sections of tongue and have laid and fitted the boards with screws, finally using a plug cutter and oak plugs. Not noticable at all unless I look hard. The boards are random length so it's easy to get away with this.

[Grunff]

I've always wondered - how do you remove plugs so that you can undo the screws? Drill them out? Or is there a non-destructive method?

[Andy Hall]

I've tended to use glue sparingly and then to remove drill them out carefully using increasing size drills, with the last one a mm or so less than the plug diameter. THen the remainder chips away fairly easily.

Obviously you don't want to do this every week, but with care you can fit a replacement plug of the same size back in. Any minor damage around the hole can be fixed with a little sawdust and PVA or some Liberon wax of the right colour.

[RichardS]

Haven't encountered the problem of having to remove them yet, but I don't generally glue plugs in, tightness of fit keeps them in well enough. So if I need to remove them it's a case of popping them out with a sharp pointy object or as you say mostly drilling them out.

Goodnight Irene for the plugs, though, but I normally keep a length of the boards back to make some new ones with should I need to.

[RichardS]

Ta, good to know I wasn't the only one worried about that.

Reckon I'll fashion a similar solution, probably won't bother with the expense of the routabout bit though.